Disclaimer: As per previous chapters.
Trigger Warning for abuse, suicide and domestic violence.
He is three years old when his father left for war. Years later, he can't exactly remember which war, which army, which general, which battlefield, Why. Someone tells him it is the remnant of a war caused by an Avatar of the water, but it's not like any of that matters anyway. He was four years old when his father didn't come back.
"Your father is going to be the death of you." He remembers his mother laughing, as his father grinned and dressed him up in his soldiers clothes, telling him that he's make a decent soldier.
He is five years when he first bends the earth under his feet with a whoop of joy.
"Your father is going to be the death of you." His mother had sighed, watching as her only earth-bending child precariously moved the earth with the laugh of someone whose new-found power has gone to their head. The sense of life under his small feet suddenly made sense, and the language of the earth flew through his limbs as he coaxed the dirt and stone into a safe shell- a little house of his own- and hid away for hours.
He is six years old when his father doesn't return, but someone who wears his father's face does. The earth rumbles in warning and promises to be there for the difficult times to come. It is his father that forces the earth to teach him of strength, of immobility, of protection and of unconditional love.
Because it wouldn't be his scarred, hollow father that taught him of such things.
"Your father will be the death of you." His mother had weakly muttered, pushing aside her son who had stood in front of her so protectively.
He is seven years old when his father kicks him from his home late at night, and fire dances from his fingertips, as he cooks the first warm meal he has had in such a long time.
The flickering flames scare him, but he smiles so wide, because now, one day when his mother and sisters were strong enough to leave, he can always make sure they have warmth in their belly. They had always taken care of him when he was a child, with a warm embrace and words- now it was his turn to use that warmth to help them.
"Your father will be the death of you." A small smile graces the lips of his mother as he comes back home with warm soup for them to eat.
He is nine years old when the man who was once his father kicks his stomach, and forces him to gasp in desperation for air. It is then that the air comes rushing towards him, and wraps itself around his body like a protective blanket. The air suddenly rushes into him, and whispers the secrets of the world into his ear, telling him all about their travels, in and out of the lungs of the living. He files this away, and uses it to makes his father breathless when he gets angry.
He is ten years old by the time the bruises heal and he first learns of the name Avatar. He likes the way it dances on the tip of his tongue. Avatar Baojia. Baojia the Avatar. He learns about those who were great before him, and though he doesn't understand how people so strong could ever be as weak and powerless as he, he swears on his life that he will protect all that need to be protected. Never again will men like his father be allowed to hurt those smaller than he.
He tells this to his sister, and she look at him with her huge green eyes and cries, though he doesn't understand why.
Wasn't she happy that he would always protect her?
He is eleven years old when but a broken bone in his leg heals without setting, sending sharp pain with every step. His father uses earth-bending then, to express how angry he is at his crippled son, but his sister step in and screams until he can flee. The next day his father marries her off. Her stoic expressions and utter acceptance makes him angry, but she tells him that its better this way, and at least she were to be wed to good men. At least she was marrying a friend she could love.
Before she leaves, she look at him with her huge eyes, and pleads to the spirits that he'll be safe, because he deserves so much better. Her pleading words for only he doesn't make sense, and clouds his heads for years to come.
He is twelve years old when his mother doesn't wake up one morning. His eyes take in the dewy blood on her lips, and the dagger she had thrust through her ribs, with such resolve and he finally notices the bruises covering her skin.
"Your father will be the death of you." He can hear her urgently whisper in his ear, and this time he finally listens.
He is twelve years old when he leaves, and doesn't look back.
Baojia the Avatar is fifteen by the time he arrives in the Fire Nation, and he finds a fire-bending master who takes him under her tutelage. She frowns at him when he shies away from any touch, but teaches him well. Only a few months pass before she sends for a teacher from the Air Nomads, who escorts him to their temples.
"It's strange," She says, moments before he leaves, with narrowed eyes, "That you are so quiet and docile. It is the opposite element that your personality has difficulty with. What has created such anger in your veins?"
The anger that he vents through fire-bending suddenly has no place to go, in the midst of the peaceful lands of the nomads.
"Your father will be the death of you." A ghostly whisper fills his ears, when he explodes and burns down a tree.
Baojia the Avatar is seventeen when his Air bending teacher walks up to him, and sorrowfully tells him the news.
"I have heard from the Earth Kingdom," He started in a low voice, "That your sister- Xiaoqin has passed away."
Only a few hours later the Air Nomad and he had started their journey to the place here his sister would rest.
Baojia the Avatar is eighteen when he arrives in the village that was once his own; the people finally recognizing him for who he truly was.
"Your father will be the death of you." They mutter to him in warning, telling him not to stay very long.
He is eighteen when he kneels at his sister's grave, and learns that the marriage that should have been fell through, and she had been made to stay with father. They tell him of the way she threw herself off the cliffs into the ocean, with her grotesque broken self dripping ruby blood behind her.
The words make his Air-bending Master grow ashy and horrified, though his pupil accepts them without questioning the words he had received. A hand rests on his shoulders, and Baojia jumps in such terror before he recognized the familiar peaceful hand it belongs to.
He is eighteen when he walks down the middle of the village, with his father in all but blood by his side. Only eighteen when a rage-filled snarl echoes behind him, from a man who wears the aged skin of his father.
Before he can think, the sorrow of his sister's death, and the smell of drink on the breathe of the old man enrages him, until stones float from the ground and fire burns in his hands.
"Your father will be the death of you." His father calls out mockingly, as he moves towards his son, finally intending to finish the job he had started so long ago.
The rage flows through his veins and relights the pain in his twisted limb, and before he can call his air training into focus, the rage of fire and earth calls upon a state that should never be reached by blood thirst.
And there's nothing anyone else can do.
"Your father will be the death of you." Is the last voice that he hears, before his own voice corrects it.
"No, I will be the death of my father."
Can you imagine the power and privilege that bending can give?
Read and Review.